


Ghosts of Christmas Past

by Kelinswriter



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-24 20:52:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17107925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kelinswriter/pseuds/Kelinswriter
Summary: Maggie looks back on Christmases past.For bloedhgarm: Hope this was everything you hoped for, and more. Love, SantaSee end for warnings.





	Ghosts of Christmas Past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bloedhgarm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloedhgarm/gifts).



It's Christmas.

Well, not Christmas exactly, but the Friday before, and since the holiday lands on a Tuesday this year the celebration is starting early. Which means food, of course — an insane amount of food, and wine, and Christmas music, and the Netflix fireplace on the TV. And also, this enormous tree.

Maggie doesn’t think she’s ever seen a tree this big outside of the sort that end up in shopping malls. In fact, she’s trying to remember if there’s a city ordinance against having one this big inside a private home. 

She takes a sip of her wine and stares at the sparkling, multi-colored lights: Green, blue, red, orange, white, and even a few random ones that look purple. She likes the white ones the best, and has ever since she was a kid. There’s something about the simplicity of white, especially in contrast to the flashier colors, that makes her feel at peace. 

Yet in this moment, her eye is drawn to one of the random purple lights. It’s strange, she thinks, to have purple on a Christmas tree — to have it anywhere, really, outside of a Goth club or a teenager’s bedroom. Then it dawns on her that it’s not a light at all, but a crystal, and that its inner glow is actually a product of light refracting through its striations. The longer she stares at it, the more her mind begins to conjure up images from the past. 

She had put these things away a long time ago.

But ghosts have long memories.

\-----

“Margarita!”

Maggie turns at the sound of her mother’s voice, knocking an ornament off the Christmas tree. It falls, and she holds her breath, hoping it doesn’t shatter, but luckily the ornament is nothing but a round ball of silky red string. “You won’t be able to break these,” Mamá had said when she bought the package of ornaments at the grocery store, and then later, when they decorated, she asked Maggie to put all six of them on the bottom rows of the tree. It was like she knew that Maggie would be nosing around underneath it on Christmas morning.

Maggie sits up straight, pulling her blue flannel bathrobe a little tighter around her favorite Snoopy pajamas, and wishes she had taken the time to put on socks beneath her slippers. “I was waiting for you, Mamá.”

“Of course you were.” Mamá sounds stern, but then she smiles to soften the words and turns on the Christmas tree lights. She sits down next to Maggie, muttering one of those words that Maggie’s not allowed to say when her butt makes contact with the cold floor. She’s wearing a green nightgown and a thick red bathrobe this morning, and her long, dark hair is in a messy braid that hangs down over her right shoulder. She looks so pretty in the glow of the Christmas lights. 

“I want to let Papi sleep a little longer before we open presents,” Mamá says, and Maggie squirms with anticipation. There’s a big box under the tree with her name on it, and she’s just sure it’s the racecar game she’s been wanting ever since Papi had taken her to the races last summer. She’d loved everything about it — the roar of the engines, the heat coming off the track, the drivers making fearless and daring moves as they jockeyed for position. She’s been imagining herself behind the wheel of one of those cars ever since. Hers, she has decided, will be black. Or maybe red. 

Mamá must see the disappointment in Maggie’s face, because she reaches over, combing through Maggie’s tangled dark hair with her fingers. 

“How many presents have your name on them?” Mamá asks.

“Five,” Maggie says, for she’s counted them, over and over again, in the gray pre-dawn light of this cold Christmas morning. Mamá has three, all big ones, and Papi — well, Papi has eight, though that’s because Mamá wrapped every one individually, even the package of white socks that go with his new pair of tennis shoes. 

“Your papá needs to know he’s special,” Mamá had said at the time, and Maggie agrees. Still, she isn’t sure how special she would feel if she unwrapped a present and found nothing but ordinary gym socks inside.

“That’s right, five presents,” Mamá says now. She slides a long, flat box from beneath the tree and says, “Since you’ve been good, you can open one now.”

“Thank you, Mamá!” Maggie says, and stretches up to throw her arms around her mother. 

_“De nada, Pequeñita,”_ her mother replies, hugging Maggie in return, and the way she rubs her hand in circles between Maggie’s shoulder blades makes Maggie feel safe, and warm, and so very loved. Mamá kisses the top of Maggie’s head and says, “Now go on. Open your present.”

Maggie turns, all in a rush, and tears into the wrapping paper with one decisive rip. The dancing bears on the paper split into pieces, revealing a plain white box, the sort that Mamá got to put Papi’s shirts in when they went shopping at the Macy’s in Lincoln. Maggie tugs it open, throwing the lid aside, and sees… 

Ariel. Stupid Ariel, from that stupid _Little Mermaid_ movie.

Maggie doesn’t like Ariel. She’s pretty, of course, and that song she sings about wanting to be part of the world is one of Maggie’s favorites, but Maggie thinks the rest of the story is kind of dumb. It seems like people are always taking things away from Ariel — first her voice, then her fins — and they aren’t giving her anything much worth having in return. People try to take things away from Belle, too, but Belle knows how to take care of herself. In fact, Belle is almost more of a hero than the Beast is by the end of the movie. And like Maggie, she loves books.

But Santa must have gotten his wires crossed, because Ariel is who Maggie is getting this year. And Maggie guesses that’s okay, because except for Ariel’s stupid face, the pajamas are mostly a pretty shade of blue that Mamá says is called ‘turquoise.’

Only her present isn’t pajamas, it’s a nightgown. And Maggie thinks nightgowns are stupid too.

“You’ll look so pretty in this, won’t you, _Pequeñita?”_ Mamá asks, and Maggie nods, trying to hide her dismay. She hopes Santa was paying more attention to the rest of her list, though it’s not his fault if he didn’t. Santa is, after all, very busy, what with having to go around the whole world in one night. She can’t blame him for getting a little confused when it comes to one little girl from Blue Springs, Nebraska.

Maggie tries not to cry when she tears the dancing bear wrapping paper off the big box and finds not her racecar game, but an Ariel sleeping bag inside. She wonders if Santa even got her letter. Maybe it got lost in the mail. 

She wears her Ariel nightgown to bed that night, and snuggles inside the matching sleeping bag with her usual covers thrown overtop. The nightgown tangles around her knees and leaves her legs and feet cold, but she does her best to ignore these things. After all, wearing it makes Mamá happy, and Maggie wants her to be happy.

When she dreams that night, it’s of a big black car roaring down the road.

 

\----------------

 

“Hand me the Phillips screwdriver, please.” 

Maggie searches through the toolbox on the workbench for the yellow-handled screwdriver, checking to make sure it’s the right kind. She’s learned the difference between the two since she started helping her dad in the garage. Mamá says a girl of fourteen shouldn’t be working on cars, but whenever she complains, Papi just says, “Who else is going to help me keep this old Toyota running? You?” 

Maggie is glad that her dad has won this battle, just like she’s glad he won the fight over letting her play sports after school. “As long as her grades stay up, why shouldn’t she?” Papi had said when her mother complained about Maggie signing up for soccer last year. “And besides, the team needs her if we’re going to beat those jerks from Wymore next month. I have a bet with their sheriff that Maggie will score two goals for every one his daughter gets.” 

And Maggie had grinned, because the Wymore sheriff’s daughter sucked at soccer, so all she had to do was make two goals and her dad would be proud. 

Maggie loves making him proud.

“So, Margarita,” her dad says, accepting the screwdriver with a quiet _“Gracias”_ and a fond smile. “What do you want for Christmas this year?”

“To learn how to drive,” Maggie says, grinning, and Papi chuckles. Maggie plants one foot on the front tire of the truck and climbs up until she can sit alongside the engine with her head tucked beneath the raised hood. She watches Papi fiddle with the spark plug, twisting and turning until it pulls free, and absently traces the dent in the side of the truck where a deer had glanced off it the winter before. Mamá has been scared to drive at night ever since, which Maggie guesses has a lot to do with why she’s so against Maggie being part of after-school activities. The only good thing about it is she lets Maggie stay over at Eliza’s house almost every Saturday night because she doesn’t want to drive over to pick Maggie up.

Maggie likes staying over at Eliza’s house. She might like it even more than she likes playing sports. 

Papi wipes the spark plug with a rag, holding it far away from him because he won’t use the reading glasses that Mamá bought for him, and says, “Can I trust you with a secret?”

Maggie nods and doesn’t say anything. Of course her dad can trust her with a secret. He can trust her with anything.

“I’ve started setting aside a little bit of money — just a little, here and there, for Mamá to have a new car next year. And when she does, then this —“ He points down at the battered silver Toyota, “This will be yours when you get your license.”

“Really?” Maggie’s smile is so big that it feels like her cheeks are about to split open. “You mean it?”

“Well, it depends on a couple of things,” Papi says. “First, I have to stay sheriff so I don’t need my own car to drive to work.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Maggie says. After all, her dad has just been reelected to another four-year term, which means she’ll have graduated before he has to run again. 

“Let’s hope.” Papi hands her the spark plug and then reaches inside the engine to extract the next one. “Also, we have to keep this thing running, which means I’ll need you to help me with maintaining it. You think you’ve learned enough that you can start doing some of this on your own?”

“I think so,” Maggie says, and then leans over to watch him, saying, “You’re going to break it if you keep yanking on it like that.”

 _“¡Qué chica caradura!”_ Papi teases, and Maggie grins and takes the other spark plug from him. It is, in fact, cracked, and she smirks at him and tosses it into the trashcan next to the workbench.

Papi opens up a set of fresh spark plugs and begins to install them. “The third and most important thing is that you keep your grades up. And no messing around with boys.”

“I won’t,” Maggie says. Half the boys in her school are farm boys who smell like cattle feed and manure, and the other half are townies who reek of Irish Spring and Axe body spray. And none of them want to date a brown girl, even if she is the sheriff’s daughter. Besides, it’s way more fun to go to the movies with Eliza than it is to go with some boy who would probably try to feel her up within five minutes of the theater going dark.

“Sooner or later you’ll want to date boys,” Papi says, and he looks sad, or maybe just wistful. “And when that time comes, I’ll make sure that he’s a nice young man who treats my little girl right.” He reaches over and tweaks her nose, and Maggie just knows he’s gotten a smudge of grease all over it. “But until then, you stay away, Margarita.”

“I promise it won’t be a problem, Papi,” Maggie says, rubbing at her nose with the back of her hand.

She doesn’t notice the sudden look of worry in her father’s eyes.

 

\------------

 

“Go,” Mamá says, and walks into the kitchen.

Maggie stares down at the scuffed brown suitcase. She didn’t pack it, so she doesn’t know what’s in it — if her mother has grabbed the Destiny’s Child t-shirt Eliza had given her for Christmas, or the jean jacket with the patches sewn on, or the hairbrush with the extra stiff bristles that is the only thing that can get bad knots out of her hair. She doesn’t know if her mother has packed the size four tennis shoes that Maggie wore last year or the size fives she moved into last month. She doesn’t know what’s going to happen to her books, her CDs, the pictures on her desk. 

Her diary.

She picks up the suitcase and feels her palm nearly slip off the handle. She’s sweaty, even though it’s five degrees out with a wind chill of minus 15. All she wanted to do when she got home was have some hot cocoa and do her homework while she waited for Eliza to call and give her an answer about her invitation to the dance, but it’s clear Eliza won’t be calling. Maggie is pretty sure that Eliza will never be calling again.

She wants to cry, but the tears seem locked so deep inside her head that they can’t reach her eyes. Her stomach feels hollow — not like it does when she’s hungry, but like it did when her _abuela_ died — and her limbs feel heavy and numb. She tries to think about what Lara Croft would do, because Lara Croft is better than anyone at getting out of no-win situations. But her mind feels blank and frozen, like it does when Mr. Reddinger pulls one of his pop quizzes in history and she hasn’t done the reading. 

If this were algebra, she thinks, she could wing it. She understands how algebra works. 

But this cold silence, this hate in both her parents’ eyes?

This she’s not good at. She’s not good at it at all.

Her dad is growing impatient, she can tell, and so she hefts the suitcase, though it’s hard to carry with her heavy backpack still hanging off her shoulders. She has a big project due at school tomorrow, and she wonders if she’ll have time to do it after she gets to wherever it is she’s going. It’s on _Great Expectations,_ which most kids don’t read until they’re seniors, but Maggie figures if she gets it out of the way now it might make it easier to qualify for AP English. Mrs. Farnsworth, her guidance counselor, says she’ll be able to start college with almost enough credits for an entire semester if she takes all three AP courses that are available to her at Blue Springs High. Add in a few scholarships and maybe her parents won’t have to worry so much about how tiny her college fund is. Maybe she won’t have to work one job after school and another on weekends and can spend her time studying instead.

Fear bubbles up, deep in her gut, as she realizes that these plans are lost forever. But she still doesn’t understand why.

 _“Papi, ¿qué hice?”_ she asks, but he simply jerks the screen door open and gestures for her to walk outside. A blast of wind hits her in the face, and she longs for her scarf, but her dad has already shut the heavy door behind her. She doesn’t think he’ll be willing to open it again.

She walks to the sheriff’s cruiser parked in the drive, the snow beneath her feet crunching where it’s packed hard against the sidewalk. She puts her suitcase in the trunk, followed by her backpack, and then waits for her dad to unlock the passenger door. The moon is full and high tonight, and she can see the areas not illuminated by the glow from the porch light almost as well as she can see the ones directly in its beam. She sees the swing set where she played when she was little, and the big oak tree with the fort her dad built for her when she was nine. She sees the basketball hoop where they play Horse almost every night in the spring and summer. 

She sees her childhood for the last time.

As the cruiser drives away, she catches a last glimpse of the twin pine trees in the center of the yard, still wrapped in the Christmas lights she and her dad had strung around them the week before Thanksgiving. They’ve been waiting until the weather improves to take them off, and every once in a while, her dad indulges her and lets her turn them on, just so the night seems a little more cheerful. 

The lights are dark tonight.

 

\-----------

 

“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Baumbach,” Maggie calls out as she closes the door. Manny had offered to clock her out early tonight, but only if she took care of three deliveries on her way home. Mrs. Baumbach is the last of them, and now that her turkey sandwich has been delivered, Maggie is free to head back to her off-campus housing and finish her packing. 

It’s 5 p.m. on Christmas Eve, and everything is starting to close. Even Manny, the cheapest bastard Maggie’s ever known, is shutting down early, though only because, “With you college kids gone and everyone else in church or at home, only pathetic losers want to eat out tonight.” Maggie had been tempted to point out that she could see the plate of ham and mashed potatoes and the huge slice of pecan pie he’d set aside for himself in the back fridge, but she opted to leave it go. Manny is an asshole, but he’s pretty good about letting her off when she has a softball game, and he lets her study in the back when there are no customers around. If he wants to be a Scrooge about Christmas break messing with his business, let him.

Besides, she has places of her own to be. Tía is expecting her to arrive in Cortland in time for midnight mass, and Maggie doesn’t want to be late. All she has to do is pack a couple things and fill her sturdy green Honda Accord with gas and she can be on her way. She shouldn’t even have to worry about snow messing with her drive.

It messes with the parking in front of her building, though. The plows have been through, and there’s a giant snow bank where her usual parking spot should be. Maggie parks a half-block away and walks to her building, a rickety brick mansion that was converted into apartments back in the fifties. Maggie and three other sophomores from the JV softball team share an apartment on the upper level; Courtney and Ashley in the main bedroom, and Maggie and Jackie in the tiny third-floor loft. Things are going to get awkward come spring if they don’t all make the varsity team, but the only one Maggie really cares about is Jackie. She’s second base, and Maggie is shortstop, and they’ve learned to read each other’s minds. 

They also bang once in a while, when one or the other of them isn’t dating some pretty freshman. It isn’t love, and it certainly isn’t anything long-term, but it feels good to have someone to sleep next to when their landlord is being a cheap fuck about keeping the heat set above sixty.

But right now, the apartment is empty. Courtney and Ashley both went home right after finals, and Jackie drove back to Omaha this afternoon. Maggie still sees her presence though, for there’s a note next to the phone that says, “Call your aunt, Asshole,” with a little drawing of Santa next to it. It’s propped up by a Christmas tree-shaped sugar cookie that’s covered in green icing and multicolored sprinkles.

Maggie takes an absent bite of the cookie and dials Tía’s number. She picks up on the third ring, and Maggie says, “Hi. I just need to take care of a few things and then I’ll be on my way.” 

“Maggie,” Tía says, and something about her tone makes Maggie feel guilty, like she always feels whenever she’s done something to inconvenience her aunt. Maggie has always tried to be as self-sufficient as possible, and her aunt, who was barely thirty-five when she took Maggie in, both appreciates and counts on this independence. The last thing Maggie ever wants to be is a burden.

“Can I bring anything?” she offers, hoping it will smooth the waters. “I could stop at Wal-Mart on the way out of town if you need anything last minute, or…”

“Maggie,” Tía says again, and this time Maggie hears that little thread of darkness that means bad news is on the way.

“What’s wrong?” Maggie asks. “Is Tía Carmelita in the hospital again?”

“No, she’s fine. She’s on her way over, in fact.” Tía takes a deep breath and then says, “Maggie, I told you I’ve been dating that doctor from Beatrice for a while, right?”

“McDreamy the Elder?” Maggie says, using the nickname she’d coined after her aunt first told her about him. “Sure. Will he be staying at the house this weekend? Because that’s okay, so long as I don’t have to hear anything.”

“He will, Maggie, but…” Tía takes in another, louder breath, and suddenly Maggie knows what’s about to happen; knows it before the words are even said. “The thing is, he has two daughters in their early teens, and they’re staying with him this weekend. So if he’s staying over, then they are too.”

“That’s okay,” Maggie says, because she’s trying to be a good sport here, and though she thinks the holidays are mostly bullshit, she really doesn’t want to be one of those pathetic losers Manny was talking about earlier. “The girls can have the double bed in my room and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“I would be fine with doing it that way, except Richard says that…well…” Tía trails off. “There are things that he’s…uncomfortable with.”

And Maggie feels her body flood with adrenaline. She knows what that means; there’s no way to not know what it means.

“Is he an ordinary homophobe, or is he the sort that pretends to be okay with it until he has to cope with actual gay people?” Maggie asks. She knows it sounds angry and bitter, but when it comes to this, there’s really no way to be anything but angry and bitter.

“Maggie, you know that’s not…I mean, he wouldn’t mind if you came for dinner, it’s just…overnight.” Tía sounds as if she’s fighting off tears. “You know that I know that you would never do anything bad…I mean…”

“Well thank you for being sure that I’m not a pervert,” Maggie says, and feels that same dull, hollow feeling that has dogged her since her parents cast her aside. “It’s nice to know you have my back.”

“I’m sorry, _Pequeñita,”_ Tía says, and she’s definitely crying now. “It’s just, I think they’re planning on closing the bank branch in Cortland next year, and I really need things to work out with Richard. You understand?”

“Yeah.” Maggie bites her bottom lip and feels her tears retreat, as they always seem to do, in these moments when she realizes that she will never be anything but disposable to her family. “Merry Christmas, Tía. You take care.”

She hears her aunt calling after her, but she disconnects anyway. There’s an ache in her stomach, but it’s only an echo of the one she felt on that Valentine’s night six years ago. And beneath it all, she really is hungry.

She scouts the fridge, but her roommates did a pretty good job of emptying it before they headed out on their holiday plans, so Maggie puts on her coat and walks down to the corner convenience store. She blows her gas money on five frozen dinners, a couple packages of Christmas cookies, some crackers, and a carton of that port wine cheese spread that her aunt always keeps in stock on holidays. She makes a final stop at the liquor store next door and uses her fake ID to spend her last twenty on a bottle of Jack. The owner is kind enough to pretend he doesn’t know that her ID is bullshit, and even gives her the bottle at a discount because, “It’s Christmas, Kiddo.”

She walks home with her bags under her arms just as a light snow begins to fall. Back in the apartment, she pulls on her sweats and sits down in front of the TV, looking for some mindless holiday movie to occupy her time. _Die Hard_ is on, and Maggie settles in, because Bruce Willis taking out a bunch of terrorists on Christmas Eve feels right up her alley.

The cheese spread has mold in it, so she eats the crackers plain.

The next year, she signs up for double shifts on Christmas.

 

\-------------

 

“Hey,” Alex says. 

Maggie turns in her chair, startled by a familiar voice in such an unfamiliar location. Alex rarely comes to the police station; more often than not, Maggie visits her at the DEO, though she does her best to manufacture some official excuse.

“Why aren’t you with your family?” Maggie asks, rising to her feet. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m sure something is wrong somewhere.” Alex smiles that sweet, beautiful smile, the one that makes Maggie feel as if her whole body is weightless, and leans one jeans-clad hip against Maggie’s desk, saying, “I felt bad that you were working on Christmas, so I thought I’d bring Christmas to you.”

And she has. She’s carrying a brown paper bag filled with plastic cartons, each filled with some key component of a traditional holiday meal: Ham and mashed potatoes and gravy and sweet potatoes with marshmallow and green bean casserole and pecan pie and frosted cookies and even some sort of peppermint mocha tiramisu. She’s also brought a string of Christmas lights as decoration, and before they start eating, Alex insists on draping them over Maggie’s desk and plugging them in.

“How did you get back from Midvale so fast?” Maggie asks. “Last I heard the 5 was backed up because of an accident.”

Alex looks a little nonplussed by this, as if she hasn’t prepared an explanation for how she has magically transported herself from a small town on the central coast to National City in the time it takes to drive to the beach. “I…uh…grabbed a ride with a friend who has a small plane,” she finally says, and then drops her eyes, studying the carton of sweet potatoes with the sort of intensity she usually reserves for alien toxins and exit wounds.

Maggie bites back a smile, because the words _Supergirl spotted coming in from the north_ had crackled across the scanner about a half-hour ago. She wonders if Alex knows that the NCPD tracks Supergirl’s movements as best it can, if only to know what locations are likely to be hot spots on a given day.

She wonders if Alex knows that she knows that Supergirl is her sister.

She pushes aside the stack of paperwork that has occupied the majority of her shift and accepts the food-laden plate Alex passes over— save for the ham, which she pushes back onto Alex’s plate with a shrug and a, “I’m not a full vegan, but except for bacon, pig just isn’t my thing.”

“More for me,” Alex says with a grin, and stuffs a forkful into her mouth. 

Maggie laughs and takes a bite of her mashed potatoes, and they spend the next two hours eating and laughing and pretending that nothing exists outside the tiny circle of Christmas cheer that they’ve created. It’s only when Maggie hears, “Science Division, come in,” on the squawk that she knows their mini-holiday has come to an end. 

Maggie walks to the box and picks up the microphone, shrugging an apology in Alex’s direction. “This is Sawyer. Go ahead.”

“Hey, Maggie,” Annie in Dispatch says. “We just got a call about a break-in at the natural history museum. Someone stole, and I quote, ‘A pterodactyl skeleton and the shin bone of a T-Rex.’”

“Well at least they didn’t steal the whole T-Rex,” Maggie says, and sees Alex’s face crinkle as she lets out an adorably un-ladylike snort-laugh.

“Yeah, that might be a little hard to manage,” Annie says. “Anyway, missing dinosaurs seems weird enough to be your turf, so I thought I’d start with you.”

“Thanks, Annie. I’ll head straight over.” Maggie hangs up the microphone and looks over at Alex, who is already gathering up the food cartons and loading them back into the paper bag. “I guess I have to go chase a couple of missing dinosaurs.”

“I’ll go with you,” Alex says, and tosses their paper plates into the nearby trashcan.

“Alex, it’s Christmas.” Maggie pulls her badge and service weapon from her desk drawer and secures both to her belt, then shrugs on her leather jacket. “Go home, have some eggnog, fall asleep in front of the fire.”

“When there’s a bunch of dinosaur DNA on the loose?” Alex arches an eyebrow, seemingly unaware of just how sexy that little quirk is. “Are you trying to horn in on my turf again, Detective?”

“Since when is dinosaurs your turf?” Maggie asks, and Alex’s eyebrow arches higher.

“I’m a bio-engineer, duh,” Alex says, and though it’s the flimsiest of excuses, Maggie can’t help but grin. She’s just so pleased that Alex wants to be with her on Christmas, regardless of how they spend their time. 

“Well then, I guess I’d better not leave you behind,” Maggie says, and leans in, feeling the heat from Alex’s body just inches from her own. 

“You’d better not,” Alex says, and grabs her by the lapels, and pulls her in for a kiss.

They spend the rest of their night figuring out that a rogue geneticist has hired two Helgrammites to steal the dinosaur parts in exchange for enough chemicals to feed them for a year. By three a.m., they are being chased through a warehouse by a cloned Allosaurus named Steve. By four, Steve has been safely corralled by the DEO and the geneticist — well, the geneticist has been eaten by Steve.

“That is so not something you see every day,” Maggie says, wondering how the hell she’s going to write this one up.

“Stick with me and it’ll be just the tip of the iceberg,” Alex replies, and then blushes, as if belatedly realizing that she’s implying some sort of future when they’ve only been dating for a little less than a month.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Maggie says, and dares to wonder if the hole that her parents dug inside her one cold Nebraska night might someday be filled. “But for now, I have to work in seven hours, so I should probably go home and get some sleep.”

“Why don’t you just crash at my place?” Alex blurts out, and then freezes like the proverbial deer in the headlights. “I mean…I just mean that we could…” 

“Drink eggnog?” Maggie teases. “Fall asleep in front of the fire?”

“That.” Alex bites her lip, and Maggie adds yet another entry to her mental list of _Alex Danvers quirks so unbelievably hot they make me want to combust._ She simply nods as Alex tries to recover with a quick, “It’s closer to here, and to the station, and I’m sure I can find a pair of pajamas small enough to fit you, or…”

Maggie lifts one hand to press against Alex’s cheek, stilling her rambling with a gentle sweep of her thumb across Alex’s lower lip. It’s soft, it’s so soft, and Maggie wants nothing more than to feel its gentle pressure on every inch of her skin. 

“Yes,” she says, and then adds, when Alex’s eyes widen, “to falling asleep with you In front of the fire.” She pushes up on her tiptoes and brushes a kiss across Alex’s mouth, murmuring, “For now.”

When they do fall asleep around six a.m., it’s in Alex’s bed.

Maggie is pretty sure it's the best night of sleep she's ever had in her life.

\--------------

 

The Christmas trees are burning. Ten of them, all in a line. There is soot, and smoke, and death.

And Supergirl is falling from the sky. 

Maggie watches her drop: Arms open at her sides, legs and head limp, cape fluttering like a bird with a broken wing desperately trying to keep itself aloft. The street shakes when she lands, shakes as if the skies themselves have fallen, and Maggie, like those around her, stands frozen in disbelief as the Girl of Steel shatters. 

A shriek pierces the night from high above as Reign, glorying in her victory, swan dives off the top of the high rise. She arcs upward, a quick flash of black against a crescent moon, before she’s lost in the darkness of the night. 

She’s killed twenty drug dealers. She’s killed five cops.

And now, it seems, she might have killed Supergirl.

Maggie works her way through the crowd, her terse, “Move aside, please, NCPD,” reacted to slowly, or sometimes not at all. Eventually the crowd parts way and she reaches the center of the rough circle that has formed around the fallen hero. She hears the roar of engines barreling down the street, and seconds later a flotilla of black SUVs pull up, black-clad agents pouring out of them like a swarm of bees. 

Maggie knows who will be the first to reach Supergirl before she even sees that flash of reddish-brown hair. Alex falls to her knees, her hands reaching for Supergirl’s face, and Maggie sees not a doctor then, but a sister, broken and lost. Then she draws in a breath and yells, “I need a Medevac chopper. Now!”

They work while they wait; placing a stabilization collar around Supergirl’s neck, easing her onto a backboard, pressing bandages to the most visible, oozing gashes on her face and torso. Maggie focuses on setting the perimeter, knowing that space will be needed for the black chopper that arrives far faster than any NCPD counterpart would have. Yet the paparazzi have still managed to arrive in time, and Maggie storms over, pushing them back when they try to get close enough to get a shot of Supergirl as she is whisked away. 

Maggie looks up at the chopper when it takes off, and for a split second, she swears that Alex is looking straight at her. She wonders if Alex realizes she is there; wonders if Alex can sense the love still burning inside her, like a fever that neither time nor distance can eradicate. Wonders if, like her, Alex aches with a loneliness that feels like it is consuming her whole.

Maggie turns to check the crowd and sees James Olsen, standing alongside Lena Luthor. Their eyes meet, and James lifts his hand, nodding, as if in acknowledgement of all the things they dare not say.

Maggie just nods and walks away. 

 

\--------

 

Maggie isn’t asleep, exactly, but when the pounding on her door starts, it startles her out of whatever post-work, post-Scotch stupor she’s been in since she sat down in front of the TV. 

She reaches for the gun on her end table and walks to the door, pushing up on her tiptoes to see through the peephole. No one is there, or so it seems; there is nothing visible except the abandoned Christmas tree that some asshole left in the alley outside. She keeps meaning to buy some work gloves and spend a Sunday morning hauling it away, but lately, all her Sunday mornings are spent at work or at the Alien Resident Community Center. She supposes it’s an improvement over three months ago, when most Sundays were spent nursing a hangover or trying to escape from whatever bed she’d ended up in after last call. She still feels burned and hollow and broken to the core, but bad things are brewing, and this is no time for her to be falling apart.

But she is really sick of looking at that dried up, rotting fire hazard of a Christmas tree.

It’s quiet outside, and for a moment, she wonders if whoever was pounding on her door is gone or if, perhaps, the noise was part of her dream and not an actual event. But then she hears footsteps on the cracked concrete, just out of the peephole’s range, followed by an incoherent muttering, as if this idiot is psyching him, her, or themselves up to knock again.

“Fuck this shit,” Maggie growls, and unlocks the door.

Alex is here, her hand poised to knock. Alex is here, in jeans and a black leather jacket, looking hotter than any human being has a right to, and also like something straight out of every dream that Maggie has had for the last six months.

Alex. 

Is here.

“No,” Maggie says, and starts to push the door shut, but Alex is faster, one arm flying out to hold it open. They stare at each other for a moment, that same contest of wills that started this shit in the first place, and Alex opens her mouth, and closes it, and opens it again.

“I can’t,” Maggie says, feeling as if something inside her is tearing in half — literally tearing, as if some monster out of the DEO’s worst nightmares is reaching inside and pulling her organs apart. This has been her dream for so long — for longer than what was, by any stretch of the imagination, rational — but now it just seems like a recipe for self-destruction. She jams her shoulder into the door, wishing more than anything that she had just an inch more leverage against Alex’s iron strength.

“I fucked up, I’m sorry,” Alex blurts out, and Maggie hesitates, just for an instant. She suspects that Alex knew she would do that; suspects that Alex has been counting on a _mea culpa_ as her best chance at getting Maggie to listen.

It’s persuasive. Fuck, it’s persuasive.

“It took you six months to figure that out?” Maggie asks, and sees Alex flinch, the same way she did after she said those four fatal words: _We can’t be together._ That was the moment that Maggie had felt that hollow place in her soul break open, its depths so deep and profound that even the department shrink had said, “Wow,” when Maggie, in a fit of desperation, had laid it all out for her. 

Maggie wonders what her shrink would be saying about the fact that this door is still open right now.

“I’m sorry,” Alex says again, and eases her arm away from the door, clasping her hands in front of her. “That was not how I wanted to start this.” She looks at Maggie, and there is something desperate in her eyes. “I shouldn’t have blocked you.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.” Maggie sets her gun on the table beside the door and crosses her arms in front of her, leaning against the doorjamb. “Alex, it’s been a bitch of a day in a bitch of a week in a bitch of a motherfucking year, so could you maybe say what you need to say so I can get on with not being able to sleep for the next month because you tore everything open again?”

She tries to hold herself together as the words spill out, to be the ballsy, Teflon-coated player that she’d been back when they first met. But her voice breaks on the last few words, and Alex’s eyes well with tears.

“I love you,” Alex says, the words a ragged whisper. “I don’t have any right to your forgiveness, and I’m not asking for it. I’m just asking for the chance to earn it.” 

“Forgiveness for what?” Maggie asks, and her voice grates like that of a woman twice her age. She’s tired, she’s so fucking _tired,_ and she doesn’t know that she has the strength to dig into this again. 

And yet she still doesn’t close the door and turn away. Because Alex is in front of her, and Maggie needs her as surely as she needs oxygen.

“I wasn’t ready,” Alex says, and shrugs, and blinks, and clenches her hands. “I wasn’t ready, and you were right about that, and when push came to shove I found a reason to tear us apart because I was afraid.”

Maggie swallows and tries to take all this in, digesting each beat of it, as best she can, until it starts to make some sense. At last she asks, “Does that mean you don’t want kids?”

“I don’t…” Alex bites her lip, and Maggie can see that she’s fighting the instinct to drop her eyes. She swallows, and takes a deep breath, and says, “I don’t know what I want. I just know that it’s been six months and I still can’t think about anything but you.”

“That’s called obsession, not love,” Maggie snaps, and then feels like a hypocrite, because hasn’t she felt the same? Hasn’t she closed her eyes in the darkness, imagining the body beneath her was Alex’s? Hasn’t she dreamed of sweeping Alex into her arms and kissing her until nothing else matters, until all the things that have driven them apart are forgotten in their need to be together?

She had never believed in soulmates, until Alex. And lately, all she wants to do is take a knife to the bond.

“I love you, Alex. I always will.” Maggie puts one hand to the door, and terror flashes through Alex’s eyes, as if she is steeling herself for the possibility that it is about to swing shut in her face. “But if you weren’t ready when you asked me to marry you, then how can I trust that you’re ready now?”

Alex thinks about this for a moment, then draws in a breath and says, “I jumped off a building this morning.”

“Again?” Maggie says, and Alex’s mouth twists to the side, a hint of a smile playing across her features. Maggie just snorts, because she knows that’s probably not even close to the craziest thing Alex has done in the last six months. She crosses her arms and looks at Alex, who is staring down at her with a combination of determination and vulnerability that is so uniquely, intoxicatingly _her,_ and says, “Go on.”

“I jumped, and I caught the bad guy, and then it hit me that a mom shouldn’t be doing something like that.” Alex jams her hands into her jacket pockets, hunching her shoulders. “I mean, moms do — they work in the military and they fly planes and they work in research labs and hospitals and are…“ Her voice catches. “…are cops. And they die, in accidents or because of illness or because they just got really unlucky.”

“People die, Alex,” Maggie says, and though she doesn’t mean it to, her voice gentles, cushioning the harsh practicality of her words. “That’s a big part of why we both have jobs.”

And Alex looks at her with an intensity that Maggie not only recognizes, but feels. It’s like every single cell of her body is reaching toward Alex, longing for a connection that, in its strongest moments, has always felt deeper than intimacy. 

Alex had never just made her feel loved or wanted. Alex had made her feel _seen._

Until she hadn’t.

“I don’t know if I can be that — be the sort of person who can do that — and still be the person a child needs me to be,” Alex says, and Maggie can see that the certainty that had driven them apart last fall has yielded, in the face of cold reality, to confusion and doubt. “I became who I am to protect Kara, but also because some part of me needed it. How can I still be me and not be that person?”

And there it is, Maggie realizes; the thing that has gotten them in trouble in the first place. How can Alex be Alex, in all her restless, relentless, insatiably driven glory, and still fit anyone into her life, whether it be Maggie or a child? How can Maggie trust Alex enough to build a life, when Alex has a habit of burning everything down around her ears the second she comes close to getting what she wants?

It’s not like Maggie hadn’t known this about Alex, after almost a year of watching her fight the instinct to self-sabotage at every turn. It’s that she had known it, and had taken the leap anyway.

And for that, she has no one but herself to blame.

The words are there on the tip of Maggie’s tongue: _Alex, I’m sorry. I love you, but it’s just too late._ And then she does something either incredibly stupid or incredibly smart — or maybe both.

She takes Alex’s hand.

The contact flashes through her like quicksilver; sure and constant, deep and true. It reminds her body of all the things that her mind has fought so hard to block out: of how their hands would find each other when they were walking down the street, or eating dinner in a restaurant, or making love. It reminds her of how the slightest touch would be enough to steady each other on a bad day or in the middle of an op gone wrong. That touch, that connection, is their anchor, their safe place, their shelter from everything that life throws at them. 

That touch is their home. 

And what Maggie wants — what Maggie needs, pride be damned — is to go home.

“You have a lot to work out,” Maggie says, and sees Alex’s gaze shift from desperate to resigned to longing to hopeful in one split-second sequence. Maggie threads their fingers together and hears the emotion she is trying so hard to contain escape in one thick, wet breath. “And much as I love you, Alex, I’m not the one to do it with. But if you can get there, then…”

 _Then what?_ she thinks. _Then I let her back in, after all that happened?_

Her therapist, she realizes, is going to have a field day with this. 

She expects Alex to jam words into the silence, to start rambling on like she does whenever she feels overwhelmed. But Alex just looks at her, and reaches out — carefully, so carefully — to tuck a strand of hair behind Maggie’s ear.

“Then maybe after I do that, I call you and we can have coffee.” Alex’s hand drifts to Maggie’s cheek, and Maggie fights the instinct to press into that palm, to lift her hands to Alex’s waist and draw her in close. 

“I could do coffee,” Maggie hears herself saying. “When you’re sure about what you want, then I could probably do coffee.”

“Maybe we could even work our way up to pool.” There’s a sparkle in Alex’s eyes now, a hint of victory, and Maggie can feel her thinking about sliding her hand down to Maggie’s neck, about drawing her in, ever so slowly, until they are kissing each other just like they did the first time. 

But instead, Alex rubs her thumb across Maggie’s cheek, and smiles, and then pulls away. “I should go.”

“Probably.” Maggie leans against the door, hoping Alex doesn’t realize it’s because her legs are trembling, and takes in the mild spring night. “Did you walk here?” she asks, and Alex blushes.

“No.” Alex tosses a sheepish look toward the mouth of the alley and says, “My bike kind of…um…blew up. So I’m using a DEO vehicle until I can get a new one.”

Maggie barks out a laugh. “I don’t know what surprises me less — that you of all people would have an exploding motorcycle, or that you’re using a government vehicle for personal gain.”

“Well, not exactly personal.” Alex tucks her hands in the pockets of her jeans and scuffs one black boot on the pavement. “I…uh…could actually use your help on a case. If you want.”

“Reign?” Maggie asks, and Alex nods.

“We have reason to believe she’s gone dormant,” Alex says, and Maggie tilts her head to the side at that interesting little tidbit. “There are a lot of loose ends I’d like to tie up, and I suspect the NCPD might be able to help.”

“God knows there are plenty of loose ends.” Maggie thinks about it for a minute, then says, “Send me the file. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks.” Alex backs up a step, then another, one corner of her mouth turning up, as if fighting off a grin. “Okay. I’ll be in touch.”

And Maggie just nods and watches her go, counting the steps that carry Alex further and further away. Before she knows it she’s drawing in a breath and calling out four words; the same four words that she will remember, until her dying day, as the most meaningful she’s ever uttered. 

“See you around, Danvers.”

Alex turns, and Maggie sees what seems like a giant weight lift off her shoulders.

“Yeah, Mags,” Alex says, and smiles that radiant smile. “See you.”

 

\---------------

 

“Hey, Pretty Lady.” Maggie feels a hand land on her shoulder, jolting her out of her reverie. “What’re you doing sitting here by yourself?”

“Just…needed a little quiet,” Maggie says, and turns to see Alex settle into place beside her, a glass of wine in hand. She slings her arm over Maggie’s shoulders and draws their heads together, her fingertips teasing a gentle path along the underside of Maggie’s ear.

“Kara holding court can be a bit much to take,” Alex says as the buzz of conversation coming from Kara’s kitchen escalates into loud laughter. She leans in close, whispering, “Especially when she and James are trying to gaslight Lena.”

“I still say that shit’s a mistake,” Maggie murmurs, and Alex tenses. But it’s an old argument, and one that, in the end, isn’t really theirs to have, so they both let it slip away, content to just be in the moment together. It’s one that Maggie never expected to have; one bought with tears, and pain, and a love so fierce that even their own very human failings couldn’t kill it. 

It had taken two months for Alex to finally invite Maggie out for coffee, and another month before Maggie finally accepted, and even now, things are still tentative. They’ve chosen to continue to live apart for the time being, with sleepovers limited to once a week and the occasional full weekend. In the spring, if things are still good, they’ll start looking for a place where they can live together; a place with room for a dog, and possibly, at some point, a child.

It’s quieter than what Maggie had expected when she imagined getting back together with Alex, and far less of a whirlwind than their first time around. But it’s good, and it’s healthy, and it feels like a solid foundation for what, Maggie hopes, will be a lifetime not just of firsts, but of sublimely mundane moments too. 

As for the make-up sex — well, Maggie is never going to complain about that.

Kara hurries over, clad in the most garish Christmas sweater Maggie has ever seen, with a bottle of red wine in her hand. “Do you guys need a refill?”

“I could use one,” Maggie says, holding out her glass. The strange purple light in the Christmas tree once again catches her eye, and she asks, “Kara, what’s that?”

“What’s —“ Kara looks at where Maggie is pointing and nearly splashes wine all over Maggie’s jeans. “Oh, Rao. I forgot that was there.”

“Is that…” Alex peers at the light until her eyes widen and she quite deliberately turns away. She looks up at Kara, frowning, and hisses, “What the hell is a Kryptonian memory crystal doing in the middle of your tree?”

“I thought it was pretty!” Kara says, and snatches it out of the branches. “It’s no big deal. I mean…” She looks over at Maggie, letting out a nervous laugh. “It’s not like you stared at it long enough for it to activate, right?”

“Of course not,” Maggie says, and takes a sip of her wine. 

“Not that it matters, so long as you don’t mind a quick trip down memory lane.” Kara tops off Alex’s glass, then bounces on the balls of her feet, saying, “Guys, get ready. Because as soon as the last batch of cookies is done, it’s time for Christmas Pictionary!”

“Imagine what she was like on her first Christmas morning,” Alex says as Kara rushes away.

“The mind reels.” Maggie rests her head on Alex’s shoulder as thoughts of Christmases long ago linger in her mind. Alex reaches up to touch her face, as if she’s trying to wipe something away, and Maggie asks, “What’s wrong?”

“Just a tear.” Alex kisses her temple, murmuring, “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m as good as I can be,” Maggie replies, nestling into Alex’s arms. She presses her hand to Alex’s cheek and draws her into a kiss. “I guess that’s all any of us can ask, right?”

Alex hums, and nods, and kisses her back.

Somewhere deep inside, the ghosts go silent.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for: Homophobia
> 
> For those who like a bit of musical accompaniment to their reading, I would suggest Leslie Odom, Jr.'s cover of "Winter Song," which can be heard here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpWsxvFMw44>


End file.
